Are Alabama's metro areas strong enough to bounce back from stresses such as the recent recession and the destructive April tornadoes?

While only time ultimately will tell, a new resiliency index shows a few metro areas in the state are more likely than the others to come back strongly from adversity. The rankings may surprise some Alabamians.

"The index measures more than 360 U.S. metros for their capacity to handle stresses ranging from economic recession to natural disasters. It creates a single statistic for each region based on the region's performance across 12 economic, socio-demographic, and community connectivity indicators.

"What it does tell us is that some regions are structurally more prepared than others, and thus have greater capacity to bounce back in the wake of stress," Foster says.

The metros are split into five divisions ranked from Very High to Very Low. The nation's most resilient metro according the index is Rochester, Minnesota, and none of Alabama's 12 metros scored in the top group of 72 metros.

Alabama placed one metro -- Huntsville -- in the second tier, three in the middle tier including Birmingham, which ranked 185 but best among the middle tier areas from the state. Seven of the state's metro areas finished either low or very low including Mobile, and perhaps surprisingly, the university communities of Tuscaloosa and Opelika-Auburn.